LETTERS
LETTERS The ego has landed I am something of a romantic. I mean that in the classical sense. I believe in rules of ethics and behavior. I think that such rules apply to all segments of our...
...I hope this letter does not sound like gloating...
...G. P. MARTIN Durham, North Carolina Med alert I was saddened to see the Monthly join the ranks of mindless, clamoring anti-medicine media with David Greenberg's story ["Club Med," May...
...Between October 1986 and June 1987, the firm spent over $4 million moving into new offices in Miami and over $2 million of the $12 million ultimately spent completing and refurbishing the executive and general offices in New York...
...In fact, NBW had year-end statements for the year ending January 31, 1987...
...Accordingly, based on books prepared by Peat Marwick & Co., the firm had a sizable net worth and had profits for partners of over $40 million for the year ending January 31, 1987...
...Since she failed, however, we wanted to give him enough space to tell his side of the story...
...Besides our countersuit, I filed no other suits...
...Films of the thirties spoke to the moral issues of the time—and so does Home Alone...
...During the Gulf war, the M1A1 tank proved admirably reliable and supremely deadly...
...This is the truth that Clancy's books gloss over, and that the Gulf war reconfirms...
...In fact, the bank had the 1986 financial statement and the fiscal year 1987 statements on both a cash and accrual method...
...LETTERS The ego has landed I am something of a romantic...
...Statement: "But this time, when the loan officer asked Washington for [Finley, Kumble]'s 1986 financial statements as required, Washington said the statements weren't ready...
...A private in the Army has no such ability, nor does some blue-collar union member building tanks for General Dynamics...
...Statement: "The statement was untrue: The firm was $70 million in debt and its California partners were accusing those in Washington of bad management...
...No loan was ever made to the Washington partners on behalf of the law firm...
...Clearly, Austin doesn't give two hoots about honestly assessing current films...
...Between October 1986 and June 1987, the firm admitted over 45 new partners, including two U.S...
...I think that such rules apply to all segments of our society—and should be even more strict for those who bear a public trust...
...It's because I care about military people—I was, unlike Clancy, once one of them myself—that I want to protect them from shoddy equipment and false expectations about war...
...Austin's pet theory simply does not stand on its merits...
...From Little Big Horn to Dances With Wolves, from The Accused to Glory to The Long Walk Home, Hollywood these days does make films like it used to...
...it was that they don't always work, and so human factors like judgment and planning in war must carry the day...
...Where does he describe a bombing mission that kills 400 civilians by mistake...
...TOM CLANCY Huntingtown, Maryland The author replies: For a man trying to get credit for being a careful writer, Tom Clancy is not a very careful reader: The point of my piece was not that our high-tech weapons always don't work...
...I am not aware of any suit by California partners accusing "those in Washington of bad management...
...That the firm "was in sound financial health...
...Her assessment of Big, for example, is just plain idiotic...
...Said et al...
...it is not meant to be taken that way...
...Fact: I never met the loan officer until November 1987, almost five months after the loan was made and disbursed...
...The Washington partners did not run the firm...
...To suggest that private practitioners will not be covered by the Data Bank is completely misleading...
...The F-15E Strike Eagles did the same—and used laser-guided bombs so effectively that one scored an air-to-air kill with a GBU-27 (the target was a hovering helicopter...
...But I'm nit-picking here...
...It was established with an eye towards permitting true peer review in a climate once fostered in this country—a climate of "innocent until proven guilty...
...The Washington office comprised seven members of the 30-member National Management Committee and one of the three co-managing partners...
...It seems to me to be appropriate that the bank would wait, as it did, for over four months to renew the $10 million facility in order to receive and study the firm's financials for the year ending January 31, 1987, and to further review a report on the firm's accounts receivable and work-in-process...
...It also hired well over 50 new associate attorneys and 10 new of-counsels...
...As journalists, you bear a public trust that demands honesty and objectivity in return for which the public is supposed to treat you and your fellow professionals with respect...
...The empirical data is directly contrary to the theme and content of your polemic targeted at me...
...The balance of family life and responsibility may be exciting, but perhaps it is too rare to be noticed in Hollywood or elsewhere...
...it is a sign of strength, generosity of character, and integrity...
...That a financial report was coming "any day...
...Rebel nation My thanks to Eric Alterman for his profile of The Nation ["Lord of the Gadflies," May...
...It is very unfair and inaccurate to report the debts of the firm without mentioning the assets, net worth, or prior earnings for the period in question...
...America's parents have been out to lunch for a decade, and the kid is "home alone"—learning without help...
...F. D. WILLIAMS Tucson, Arizona Is the title "Pretty Worthless" a reference to today's movies or your own in-house assessment of Austin's article...
...Statement: "The loan officer thought this was odd and stood up to the director...
...How many doctors in private practice do you know who don't have hospital privileges—or could survive without them...
...Your piece was most uncomplimentary...
...Fact: During May and early June 1987, over 20 members of the firm's management committee executed a resolution authorizing the $10 million borrowing from NBW...
...On but one simple note: The son's suicide was prompted not by the prospect of medical school, but rather by the father's vow to ship him off to a military boarding school within the week...
...Fact: I never made such statements to any officers or directors of NBW...
...I'm not going to ask you to write a retraction of what you said about my literary abilities...
...If you don't like the way I write, plenty of other people do...
...Admission of error is not a sign of weakness...
...Further, during the entire loan approval process, I never discussed this loan request with any officer or director of NBW...
...Indeed, my basic critique of Clancy is that his adolescent fascination with weapons makes him insensitive to the human element in warfare...
...It is sad that the Monthly interprets a judicial review process as a way to gag the public...
...And how can Clancy convince us that the U.S...
...While the firm owed the four banks over $60 million, in June 1987 the firm also had net accounts receivable and work-in-process of over $90 million and fixed assets of approximately $27 million, net of depreciation...
...I make mistakes, too—who doesn't...
...Washington went straight to Hodges...
...Washington, D.C...
...Good criticism requires recognizing the differences...
...that it erupted in my beloved Washington Monthly—as a cover story, no less—is truly disheartening...
...While well-meaning people may observe at length the decay of our society and decry those who depict it in film, society is always in decay and in rebirth...
...You were wrong...
...Okay...
...The editors reply: Lynda Edwards tried repeatedly to reach Mr...
...I believe our views were reasonable under the circumstances...
...Fact: I did not have a flurry of suits...
...The article is littered with errors of fact and analysis...
...They were at the printers being redone or something.— Fact: I did not know the loan officer during the loan approval process and never spoke to him about any matter or the furnishing of financial statements...
...To suggest that there are "real loopholes" in the system is to fail to understand the mission of the Data Bank...
...Worse, it's precious hard to tell if she actually saw some of the movies she so stridently attacks...
...Those statements were also distributed to all partners of the firm during the period May-June 1987...
...Has greed or some form of imbecility born of intellectual incest destroyed your ability to think...
...I have never "trashed" our military personnel...
...Statement: "[T]he California partners sued NBW because they believed no reasonable and prudent man would have lent those Washington partners money...
...I can only surmise one of the above after seeing the cover of your May issue...
...would seamlessly triumph in a war against a bellicose Soviet Union when the aforementioned serious errors occurred in single-front fighting against a country whose population is only 6 percent of ours, whose GNP is 1 percent of ours, and who we outspent on military hardware 50 to 1? Furthermore, it's the worst kind of demagoguery to suggest that I owe an apology to the Americans who operate our weapons systems...
...We have checked our telephone logs and have not found a call from Lynda Edwards during February, March, April, and May 1991...
...I guess Greenberg never bothered to check the litigation histories of doctors who have been "denounced" by colleagues...
...I'm disappointed her dreck made it into the Monthly...
...Without the statements, he said, there was no way NBW could make the loan...
...I can defend myself as the occasion demands since I have the ability to reach large audiences at any time of my choosing...
...We filed a countersuit against Mr...
...The executive offices of the firm were in New York...
...To name a few: >Since your author was so interested in the problems associated with reporting negligent physicians, I was shocked to see no mention of the antitrust regulations that make it fearsome, if not totally impossible, for "policing" to occur within physician ranks beyond the mechanisms of state or local medical societies...
...Further, I never went to Mr...
...The important thing about mistakes is that you learn from them...
...ROGER KEELING Santa Cruz, California Has your publication lost its collective mind...
...I would consider her imbecilic ranting an insult to my intelligence no matter where it appeared...
...Prove it...
...JON ARNOLD Chicago, Illinois Bank shots I would like to make some corrections to Lynda Edwards's May article on the National Bank of Washington ["With Friends Like These, Who Needs Loan Officers...
...Good movies require cinematic judgment of the highest order...
...combat deaths come from friendly fire...
...The Data Bank is intended for use by hospitals in credentialing physicians...
...He said the statements were coming,' Hodges recalls...
...she's obsessed by her greater purpose, which is to argue that "they don't make 'em like they used to...
...What I do ask is that you give a fair shake to the Americans who make and operate the systems that you so thoroughly—and wrongly— trashed...
...Hodges about this loan request during the loan approval process or prior to its disbursement...
...Big" people are fooling around and fooling themselves...
...Austin is a reactionary curmudgeon yearning for a past that never really existed...
...Fact: The $10 million loan was made and disbursed to the firm, not to the "Washington partners...
...In refusing to be frank about the former, Tom Clancy continues to set soldiers up for the latter...
...I submit, sir, that my predictions and observations on the quality of our people and our weapons were, if anything, conservative...
...ROBERT B. WASHINGTON JR...
...Where in Clancy's books do a high percentage of U.S...
...at worst, we may have been optimistic...
...Austintatious "Pretty Worthless" [Beth Austin, May] says, "Good relationships require moral judgment of the highest order...
...But against her five select films from the good old days, I could stack 15 or 20 films from the past 15 years...
...Statement: "That statement was used in lieu of the financial reports, which were supposedly coming 'any day...
...If you're as good a journalist as you claim to be, you have all of those qualities...
...In addition, the three co-managing partners also executed an agreement containing a provision asserting that there had not, between October 1986 and June 1987, been material adverse changes in the firm's operations or finances...
...Victor Navasky's statement that a magazine "should not come to power" now fully explains to me why The Nation has long conceded the field to those many magazines that have no such scruples...
...Fact: Which statement was untrue...
...The F-117A stealth fighters all returned home without so much as a nick (in Red Storm, some were actually lost...
...They call it work, but they, too, are out to lunch...
...Washington by phone...
...Hodges and other directors in the original suit filed against Mr...
...These facts and many, many more were a sufficient basis for one to feel comfortable in executing the loan agreement...
...Statement: "On June 3, 1987, Washington and two other partners signed a statement swearing that the firm was in sound financial health...
...Between October 1986 and June 1987, the firm opened new offices in Chicago, Sacramento, Tallahassee, Baton Rouge, Orange County, and D.C.'s Willard office building...
...Who is it, sir, who missed the mark...
...In the end, this article is inaccurate and materially misleading...
...Sure...
...senators, to the Washington office...
...Moreover, no request was ever made of me regarding the furnishing of financial information in connection with the approval of this loan...
...Anyone—or any publication—that would use the word "worthless" in any proximity to a picture of Julia Roberts has left all reason behind...
...Now, about 18 months ago you did an article on me, my books, and my views on (among other things) the efficacy of American weapons and the people who operate them ["Paperback Fighter," Scott Shuger, November 1989...
...MARINA EIN Washington, D.C...
...Would she have preferred it if the 12-year-old child (magically transformed into an adult) had chosen to abandon his childhood in favor of 12-hour days in the office...
...The bank is designed as a check on truly negligent or malpracticing doctors—not as a public gripe channel...
...The precisionguided bombs we dropped established a hit-probability of over 90 percent (the contractors only promise 85 percent or so...
...I could go on, but the short version is that you would be very hard-pressed indeed to find something that didn't work...
...Statement: "In April 1989, Said and Hodges reached an out-of-court settlement, although Washington kept up his flurry of suits...
...The Apache helicopter and its associated systems performed awesomely...
...And I'm quite certain Austin must have been drunk or asleep through most of Dead Poets Society...
...That the undersigned executed a "statement swearing" to a then-existing fact...
...The war against Iraq seems to prove that all of these nameless people are deserving of more respect than the press has given them, and in their name I appeal to your sense of fair play...
Vol. 23 • July 1991 • No. 7
